Jesse Norman (Hereford and South Herefordshire) (Con): It is with a heavy heart that I speak to the Bill before the House. I am a reformer, and I would welcome a well-crafted Lords reform Bill without election that reduced the size of the upper House, removed those who have committed serious criminal offences, improved the scrutiny of legislation, strengthened the appointments process, reduced political patronage, converted the hereditary peers to life peers, and separated the peerage as such from the legislature.
Those measures would constitute a great reforming Bill and would, I suspect, pass through this House on a free vote. This Bill, however, is a hopeless mess.
House of Lords reform is like a bad dose of the clap: it may feel good at the time, but the result is an unending pain in the proverbials. I can’t, er, speak from personal experience, but even the briefest glance at the Government’s plans to elect the Lords makes the point. The new bill comes to the Commons next week, for what promises to be a stormy debate. It’s a disastrous hotchpotch of measures, which will create a free-floating class of electorally empowered senators on fifteen-year terms, with no constituencies and no possibility of re-election to discipline them. Even Lord Strathclyde,
My view is that the House of Lords Reform Bill raises a constitutional issue of vital importance and considerable complexity:
1 The Bill does not adequately address the central issue of constitutional concern: the fact that a House of Lords most of whose members will be elected will almost certainly be much more assertive than the unelected House of Lords and reluctant to give way.
Like cowboys, parliamentary Bills fall into three categories: the good, the bad and the ugly. But every so often you come across a Bill that is neither good nor bad nor ugly, but just a hopeless mess.
